Forever Young, Part III: Supported by social network, challenged by mentors

Christopher W. Hunt

Published 10:25 pm, Saturday, February 2, 2013

In his childhood years in Greenwich, Steve Young had little trouble mixing with friends. Outside of games on the street or in the fields at the nearby schools, he fit right in. But as kids turned the corner into adulthood in the late 1970s, there were certain expectations that included drugs and drinking. Alcohol use was prevalent with the legal drinking age then 18, and many teens experimented with marijuana.

For a young Mormon, this posed a significant dilemma -- to remain social with friends but not partake in some of their activities. Young found himself walking this fine line.

Many friends hosted parties after games, including those at the home of Greg Campbell, Young's close friend and receiving partner on the football team.

"We might be sitting in my TV room having a few beers, and then Steve would arrive," Campbell said. "As our leader, he would sit with us, but we wouldn't press him to drink."

Campbell recalled that Young's teammates and friends had too much respect for him to place him in those situations.

"We toned it down around Steve because we knew it made him uncomfortable."

Eddie Sheehan recalled there was little peer pressure with Young because of the respect he gained on and off the field.

"I mean, Steve would come to a party, he'd get a glass of milk or juice and move on; after a while we did not think much about it."

Another of Young's football teammates, Marc Gangi, saw this as a unique situation. "There was a lot of peer pressure among other kids to drink, but not with Steve," he said. "So it was remarkable that when Steve arrived we just did not pursue that with him. He was a special person."

Teammate Mike Gasparino often found himself defending his friend. "We might not have fully understood how Steve's Mormon faith played into the social aspects, but as long as it was important to him, that's all that mattered to us; we had his back when it counted," he said.

One such incident occurred on a weekend night in 1979 at the home of teammate Scott Symington, who invited rival football players from another high school to join the group to party. Spotting Young, they starting harassing him about his refraining from drinking. "They yelled over to me, 'Hey, there's 'Mr. Goody, Goody,' followed by much verbal abuse," Young recalled.

Gasparino and Symington stepped in before the incident could turn into a physical altercation. "Mike and Scott were big guys and took care of business," Young said. "It was the coolest thing in the world because we may have worshipped differently, but, in the end, we were friends and that's what mattered most to them."

As a disciplined athlete, Young's Mormon faith kept him centered and away from these types of temptations. "Fundamentally there is a section of Scripture for us called 'The Word of Wisdom' and it talks about a health code," Young noted. "It was a promise to God that if I fulfilled that promise I would keep myself from anything that could be addictive and I found that this almost protected me physically."

One friendship Young maintained outside of his sports circle was Dave Van Blerkom, another North Mianus neighbor who converted to Mormonism when both were in high school. "Unlike Steve, I lost a lot of friends at GHS because I did not smoke or drink," he said.

But Van Blerkom found a close friend in Young, with whom he attended social events at the Mormon Church in New Canaan. "We would attend church youth activities and dances together and just have fun."

Van Blerkom said he was always amazed at Young's ability to maintain large, but distinct groups of friends. "He would have his high school teammates but then a separate group of friends who did not play sports but just studied, and yet another group of friends in the Mormon circle."

Young served as best man at Van Blerkom's wedding in 1984, and they remain friends today.

Preparing mind

and body

Though Young blossomed into a 6-foot-2, 215-pound quarterback at Brigham Young University, he was on the small side as a kid. As an 11-year-old wanting to build bulk like most footballers, Young first altered his diet. "I remember going to McDonald's with Steve at that time," Paul Perry said. "He would order extra-thick milkshakes there to gain weight, but nothing seemed to work."

Though bulk was elusive, Young's ability to analyze situations helped him excel even when his natural ability might be lacking.

"He may not have been the best passer in football or the best shooter in basketball or the best hitter in baseball, but he had an insatiable desire to win and he had an innate ability to figure this out both physically and in his mind," Dan Gasparino said.

Much of this ability came through his childhood activities. Young's sister, Melissa, remembers a play the Mormon Church was putting on; Steve had agreed to play a Russian dancer. "He would get very low and kick his legs out, and I am convinced this helped him later on," she said. "I can see why he might have been hard to tackle playing football; he had such great balance because he would practice things over and over until he perfected it."

One day when driving by the Young home on Split Timber Place, Dave Grimsich noticed something that caused him to do a double-take. "Steve was riding around the driveway on a unicycle. One of his brothers was bouncing a ball to him while he was shooting baskets," Grimsich recalled. "He was probably 13 or 14 at the time and doing something most adults couldn't do."

Young focused most of his training on preparation for football. After taking on the quarterback role his junior year, he wanted to ensure that he had every play perfected. "We played on Saturdays, so the night before, on Friday, we would do what we called the 'walk through,' running the plays without our pads on," recalled Frank Parelli, a senior at the time and Young's primary receiver that season. "But Steve always asked if some of us would remain with him after practice to run the patterns and routes again. He was a perfectionist and was always working hard to get better," Parelli added.

As a junior leading so many seniors, Young felt it critical to be putting in the extra time. "Frank was older than me; my receiver and I wanted to make sure we knew how to get this done," he said. "It was critical to be technically sound and I wanted my players and coaches to know I was doing a good job; I worked hard for that."

After a subpar year of passing the ball, Young spent the summer leading into his senior year working with close friend, Greg Campbell, who was now the team's primary receiver. Four times a week, the duo would meet at Binney Park in Old Greenwich. "Steve had a job painting Christy's house," Campbell said. "So he would come right to Binney from there without cleaning up and paint would get all over the ball," Campbell recalled. "But all of this practicing really helped us out; we ran routes, worked on timing and we improved dramatically."

Young viewed the Binney sessions as critical. "There was work to be done and Greg and I took it all very seriously; we wanted to be county champions," Young said. Part of the preparation would be found in the pages of an article Young had seen around that time. "I had read that part of Dick Butkus' summer training was to push a car around his neighborhood, so we thought we would try the same thing," Young remembered.

Calling on teammate and neighbor Mike Gasparino, the two mapped out their strategy. With Young's 10-year-old brother, Tom, steering the family's 1965 Oldsmobile, Steve and Gasparino pushed the car up and down nearby Revere Road, a dead-end street. "At the time we were trying to build up our legs and our stamina," Gasparino recalled. "But looking back, I think it just led to bad backs."

Frustrated over his lack of throwing ability, Young sought an innovative way to help himself. In woodshop during his senior year, he fashioned a football out of wood, with tape serving as laces. He took his oak "pigskin" to the high school's workout room, where he detached the chain from the bar of a Universal weightlifting machine and clipped the end to an eyehook he screwed into the middle of the ball.

He adjusted the weight pin on five pounds and stood in front of the Universal with his back to the unit. Gripping the ball, he moved it back and forth in a throwing motion, the weight adding resistance. "He would do 30 to 40 reps on it each time," Campbell said. "By the time the season had started, he had an incredibly strong forearm and shoulder." Young doubled his passing yardage that year to 984.

Teacher of the year

As he started his second year at Greenwich High School, Young had seemingly reached the apex of his young life -- the co-captain of three sports at which he was excelling, maintaining top grades and dating a cheerleader, the popular junior seemed to be in a good place. But Young wanted to push the academic envelope further.

He signed up for pre-honors calculus, a course taught by relentless boys swim coach Terry Lowe, who was even more unbending in the classroom. Though Young performed up to his usual standards by garnering an A in Lowe's pre-honors course as a junior, he had to work much harder and anticipated a far more challenging senior year.

It was. For the first time in his life, Young struggled with a subject.

"It was a stiff punch to the gut," recalled Young, who was already balancing football commitments by the time classes commenced in September 1979. Lowe would have none of it. "He said to me, 'I don't care if it's football season. This class comes before that, and if you want to get an 'A' in my class, good luck to you, but I am not giving you any breaks because you have a game or practice.' "

John Weigold, who was the only other member of the football team in Lowe's class, remembers how hard he and Young worked. "We would study together on our open blocks, challenging one another. But it was really tough; Lowe's class was the most difficult we had ever taken and we wondered how we would survive it."

During the first two academic quarters, Lowe gave Young a C, the lowest grade he ever received. "He was quite deflated," Lowe said. "But I could see that Steve simply did not want to accept mediocrity and really found a way to meet the challenge."

With help from Weigold and Dave Van Blerkom, who was taking the same course but with another teacher, Young pushed ahead. "Steve and I would have late-night study sessions at my house," Van Blerkom said. "My strength was calculus and his, AP Western Civilization, so we helped each other."

Van Blerkom's mother, who worked at Merrill Lynch, was an excellent typist, so she would take their handwritten notes and, late into the evenings, type up the boys' term papers. Young's dedication paid off and he achieved a B at the end of the year.

Young recalled how "brutally hard" the course was, but credits Lowe with teaching lessons that went well beyond the classroom. "Because Terry's class was challenging me more intellectually, I started performing more effectively on the football field," Young said. "Many sports, especially football, are like a human calculus; 22 people in constant motion and you are the master of it."

Lowe says understanding movement helped Young as an NFL quarterback. "The quarterback position is complex," he said. "Steve had to understand and apply numerous combinations and options and that is at the heart of what calculus is."

The effect on Young was so profound that when the NFL's program to honor teachers on a national level was developed, Young nominated Lowe, who won the NFL Teacher of the Year Award in 1994, which was presented at the Pro Bowl in Hawaii. "It was one of the great thrills of my career," Young said.

Though Lowe's class was the biggest individual course challenge for Young, he viewed his entire academic experience at Greenwich High School as outstanding and views the high school as better than many private institutions.

"Palo Alto High School touts a great program and sends many of their graduates to Stanford," Young said of his current city of residence. But I don't care; Greenwich High School is the best I have ever seen. You have free time; it holds you accountable and it really prepares you so well for college. I was a mature adult by the time I went off to BYU and it was 100 percent due to GHS. I'd put my high school education up against anyone's."

John Sullivan, a 2003 graduate and football star at GHS who now plays center for the Minnesota Vikings, agrees. "My education at Greenwich was second to none," he said. "It was also a very family oriented atmosphere and it exposed me to a lot of different people which has helped me later in life. I would not be playing professional football today were it not for what GHS offered at all levels."

The final curtain

Young's senior football year commenced that summer as he and co-captain Mike Gasparino readied the squad for the upcoming season. Congregating at Young's house, the two would carefully plan the captains' practices at Eastern Junior High School for the week or so prior to the start of the school year. The Cardinals had a talented group. Their line consisted of Bert Morano at center, guards Randy Pace and Marc Gangi, and Scott Symington and Mike Gasparino, known as "the bookends" playing at tackle. The team's primary running backs were Will Saleeby and John Pastore but, after Pastore went down with mononucleosis early on, Saleeby handled the majority of the workload with help from Jay Cappocia and Chris Winters. John Weigold was at the tight end position with Greg Campbell at wide receiver. Having worked on his passing that summer with Campbell, Young felt more of a complete player.

That season, coach Mike Ornato converted to a Veer offense, a triple option formation. "For personnel reasons we went with the Veer," offensive line coach Rocky DeCarlo said. "It also gave us a different look and it played more to Steve's strengths as a runner."

The team won its first four contests. As the season wore on, the relationship between the quarterback and his coach grew into one of mutual respect.

Eager to learn as much as he could, Young sought out Ornato in his office, peppering him with questions.

"The conversations I had with Mike were invaluable," Young said. "I admired him so much; to me he was Tom Landry or Knute Rockne. To have his approval was everything; to have his disapproval was devastating."

Like Gasparino and Perry before him, Ornato's toughness helped prepare Young, who still felt his presence when playing in the NFL. "He was a man of ultimate accountability," Young said. "There was no exit door with him or place to hide; you either performed well or you were out in his book."

The team's first loss, 24-13, was to Wilton, but Young threw for 179 yards and hooked up with Campbell six times.

The next week, homecoming for GHS, the Cardinals lost again, 40-20 to Westhill, and Young injured his shoulder in the first quarter and was replaced by Tim Grimsich, Dave's younger brother. Two more wins followed against Danbury and Rippowam, respectively, setting up a final contest against Darien that would decide which team would make the playoffs.

After having been rained out for two days, the teams met Monday in Danbury. Still nursing a sore shoulder, the southpaw Young relied on his running skills and short pitches to his backs, using only his right arm. With Greenwich trailing, they scored late in the game and went ahead on a two-point conversion, a short toss from Young to flanker back John Smeriglio.

Danbury came right back with a drive down the field. With only seconds left, they were forced to try a field goal. If they made it, Danbury would win by a point. But Danbury's kicker hit it wide and missed. Greenwich won, 22-20, and headed to the postseason to meet Darien at Stamford's Boyle Stadium on Thanksgiving Day.

Darien was a powerhouse and the Cardinals quickly found they could not move the ball. The Cardinals tried to push through, but even when a halfback option pass from Saleeby to Campbell was called as a penalty in their favor, Greenwich could not gain momentum. "The game could have been a blowout," said running back Chris Winters, now the headmaster at Greenwich High School. "It was really a closer game than it seemed and it was competitive to the end."

The Cardinals still lost, 17-0. "I felt miserable," Young said. "One of the worst days of my life because our goal was to win a championship that season and we failed."

It was Young's last game in a Cardinals' football uniform.

Christopher W. Hunt is an award-winning author and business writer. Scott A. Scanlon contributed to this article.